Should Celebrities Weigh In On Politics?

Pharrell Williams, Chappell Roan and Janet Jackson are the latest celebs receiving flack for stepping into the conversation.

On November 3, 2016, days before the election, Funny or Die released a video titled “Sensual Pantsuit Anthem,” featuring Lena Dunham, Cynthia Erivo and Charlamagne Tha God.

In the video, MC Pantsuit, played by Dunham, defends “the nation’s baddest grandmother” whilst rapping about Hillary Clinton’s accomplishments. Toward the end of the video, in true Lena Dunham 2016 fashion, she strips down to a “sensual pantsuit” because “you have to show your whole body, everything you have, for the candidate you love.”

She asks Erivo to join her. “No, I’m good,” Erivo riffs.

Then Dunham offers a moment of self-reflection:

“I wonder if I’m actually hurting her chances of winning.”

It’s a moment meant to cap the sketch, but its suggestion reverberates to this day. In fact, some are saying it’s 2016 all over again. That’s a comment I’ve seen volleying around the Internet in the last few weeks as celebrities have been entering the political arena in the form of endorsements, acting as surrogates, expressing “annoyance” at fellow celebrities for trying to tell their fans who to vote for, proliferating misinformation and messaging apathy over the “problems on both sides.”

In 2016, when we were all so innocent and naive, celebrities came out in droves in support of Hillary Clinton. Katy Perry went door-to-door canvassing on her behalf, LeBron James wrote an op-ed with his endorsement for Business Insider. “The republic is under siege by a moron,” Bruce Springstein told Rolling Stone, speaking of Donald Trump. “I like Hillary. I think she would be a very, very good president.” Beyoncé and Jay-Z headlined a fundraiser for Clinton. “I stand with Hillary,” Kim Kardashian wrote in an essay for her website. It seemed, anywhere you turned, celebrities were out in droves offering strong words of support for Clinton’s candidacy, if not an outright endorsement.

Taylor Swift was one of the few mega-celebrities to remain a-political. This caused enormous backlash for the singer. A 2017 Guardian article falsely declared that her refusal to denounce Trump showed that she was “a musical envoy for the president’s values.” Swift broke her silence years later, in 2019, telling Vogue her reasoning:

“The summer before that election, all people were saying was, She’s calculated. She’s manipulative. She’s not what she seems. She’s a snake. She’s a liar. These are the same exact insults people were hurling at Hillary.”

She then added an addendum similar to Dunham’s three years earlier:

“Would I be an endorsement or would I be a liability?”

Should celebrities weigh in on politics? If you think no, the best ammunition for your argument is that celebrity endorsements don’t move the needle — just look at 2016 as proof. If you think yes, your best ammo is statistics. During Barack Obama's campaign in 2008, professors at Northwestern University and the University of Maryland published a study that found Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of Obama scored the President over a million votes. You might also argue that Trump’s very candidacy is proof that celebrities have weighed into politics to significant results, regardless of if they should.

No matter how you feel, politics have become a major talking point for journalists when profiling subjects of late. It’s apexed in the last few weeks with Pharrell Williams, Chappell Roan and Janet Jackson all engulfing themselves in controversies after sharing their political hot takes.

In a recent profile of Pharrell Williams, the musician-turned-fashion-designer was asked if he would allow either party to use his music in their campaigns. “I don’t do politics,” he responded. (Quick fact check: In 2018, Pharrell performed at the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces Gala, which helped raise $60M for IDF soldiers. That same year, he sent Donald Trump a cease and desist demanding him to stop playing “Happy” at his rallies. A decade earlier, he participated in the Rock the Vote campaigns ahead of the 2008 election.) He continued:

“In fact, I get annoyed sometimes when I see celebrities trying to tell you [who to vote for]. There are celebrities that I respect that have an opinion, but not all of them. I’m one of them people [who says], ‘What the heck? Shut up. Nobody asked you.’ When people get out there and get self-righteous and they roll up their sleeves and shit, and they are out there walking around with a placard: ‘Shut up!’”

This received a firestorm of backlash online, calling out the hypocrisy and the privilege. As one tweet reads:

Chappell Roan, too, has drawn the ire of many for her political opinions. It began back in June during her set at the Governor’s Ball music festival when she revealed to the crowd that she had declined an invitation to perform at the White House Pride event. “We want liberty, justice and freedom for all. When you do that, that’s when I’ll come,” she told the crowd. In a subsequent profile, she shared that she had something “way worse” planned: She was going to show up and then refuse to perform, instead reading the poetry of some Palestinian women she had selected. She ultimately decided against it at the urging of her publicist: “You fuck with the president and the government, your security is not the same, and neither is your family’s,” she was told.

In an even newer profile (Roan has really been making the rounds) that went up over the weekend, Roan caught flack for offering this:

“I have so many issues with our government in every way. There are so many things that I would want to change. So I don’t feel pressured to endorse someone. There’s problems on both sides. I encourage people to use your critical thinking skills, use your vote – vote small, vote for what’s going on in your city.”

She goes on to list “trans rights” as the change she wants to see in the election this year:

“They cannot have cis people making decisions for trans people, period.”

It should be noted that in a February campaign video, Trump pledged to enact a federal law that recognizes only two genders if he is reelected. That said, Roan is taking a lot of flack for simply stating something even harder-core Kamala voters can admit: Problems persist.

Is it a helpful message in corralling support for Kamala Harris? No. Was that her goal? No. Does this mean she isn’t voting for Kamala Harris? No.

And then there’s Janet Jackson, who looked at Williams and Roan and said “hold my beer.” In a profile published over the weekend, Jackson said this about Kamala Harris:

“You know what they supposedly said? She’s not Black. That’s what I heard. That she’s Indian… Her father’s white. That’s what I was told. I mean, I haven’t watched the news in a few days. I was told that they discovered her father was white.”

Unlike Williams and Roan, who perhaps gave unsatisfying responses to some, Jackson propelled false claims in the vein of Donald Trump himself. As Kamala Harris once said: “Okay, so there’s some education that needs to be done, I can see that.”

Should celebrities weigh in on politics? It’s too simple a question, really. Celebrities like Oprah and Taylor Swift have proven to be powerful surrogates. I’m also not a proponent of policing what public figures should and shouldn’t speak about. Really, it’s on those listening to be discerning about what weight we give to these opinions based on who is sharing them. But asking people, just because they possess a modicum of fame, about their political beliefs is a system set up for failure. You’re going to get dumb answers, uneducated ones, ignorant ones and, at worst, misinformed ones. Should celebrities weigh in? Undecided. Can they weigh in? Yes. Will they weigh in? Yes. Do we have to dignify each weigh-in with our outrage? That remains the question.